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1/25/2017

Living With Intention

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The virtues of being Mindful ​

What is a purposeful life?   If you are not living a purposeful life, what kind of life are you living?  Is it accidental, unintentional, or does it seem at times as other forces are influencing what you do on a daily basis?  Do you get to decide how you think, feel, and behave every day or do you feel less in control of who you are in the moments that pass throughout the day?    Are you driving the car or are you letting the car take you where it wants to go?  Sometimes it can seem that the car takes us away and that we somehow magically arrive at our destination as we seemingly detach from the driving experience as we are in the process of driving.  That sounds a bit silly but when you stop to think about this for a second, I bet you can think of several times when maybe you adopted a more passive role in your life and waited for things to happen rather than taking the initiative to make things happen the way you wanted or intended.  

Living a purposeful life starts with being in the moment and being mindful of your thoughts and feelings.  Being in the moment is simply focusing on the here-and-now.  It is sometimes easier to describe mindfulness and being in the moment by first stating what it is not.  Mindfulness is not thinking about what will happen later today, tomorrow, or later this week.  It is not spending hours of the day trolling through social media, texts, and email on your computer or cell phone.  It is not worrying about if something bad will happen,  being in a rush to get to school, splitting your attention among multiple projects, or sitting on the couch while you unconsciously eat a pint of Rocky Road ice cream.   There is a growing movement in the field of mindfulness research that shows that being present and in the moment and being intensely focused and mindful of yourself and your immediate surroundings leads to reduced emotional and psychological distress and a greater sense of well-being.  (Carmody & Beer, 2008; Lau et al.,2006; )  

Being mindful is simply being aware of what is going on in and around you. It's being aware of thoughts and feelings, allowing them to occur, not attaching our judging them, but simply observing and experiencing them, as if you were watching them from the bank of a stream as they float by.    Mindfulness can be a form of meditation.  For thousands of years, meditation has been well documented in its effects of increasing a sense of well being and positive health.

Mindfulness has many practical purposes and has been used globally, in meditative circles, for centuries, if not millennia. Professionally, mindfulness has been utilized for decades in the treatment of anxiety, depression, stress management, PTSD, AD/HD, weight management, and chronic pain management.   Take anxiety for example.   When you worry about something, you are thinking about something you anticipate happening in the future. Some have referred to this as praying for what you don’t want.   You hope it doesn’t happen, but you worry that it might.  If the unpleasant thing does happen, that is unfortunate.  Hopefully you have taken active steps to minimize its effect on you.  If you spend hours or days worrying about it, you have essentially doubled your stress about it.  If it doesn’t and you continue to worry about it, you still have contributed to the stress in your life.  Your thoughts become fixated on the thing you choose to worry about, and you likely miss out on what is happening around you, at that moment  With mindfulness, you  choose what to do with your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.  You can continue to fixate and ruminate about these thoughts.  You can try to ignore the thoughts.  Or, you can be mindful of the thoughts and feelings as they occur.  Keep reading for an example of mindfulness meditation.  

I believe that to first start living a purposeful life, one needs to truly be aware of what they value the most.  Many of my clients have told me that what is important to them, among other things, is their health, their career or academic achievements, family, exercise, leisure and recreational time, safety and security, spirituality, meaningful friendships and relationships, and emotional stability.   It is often what we value the most the guides our behavior.  Yet I think many people who aren’t living a purposeful life, often get de-railed or sidetracked from what is important to them.  This may be, in part, due to stress, competing demands, or other distractions that lead us in different directions than we intended.  

There are so many electronic devices, gadgets, and social media outlets that purport to help you get and stay organized, connect with others, and network with the world at large.  I'll be the first to admit that many of these devices and outlets do this very well.  Yet I wonder sometimes if the electronic revolution that keeps rolling on at break-neck speeds is truly enhancing our quality of life.  After all, we spend so much time planning for the future, connecting with others, organizing our busy schedules, and working harder at being successful, I wonder if we are missing what is happening right now, in the present moment, within ourselves.  Are we failing to appreciate the here and now and all the wonderful potential things that happen in the moment.  As John Lennon said, “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans.”  .  

Example of Mindfulness
I was driving home the other evening after a long day of torrential rain.  The clouds in the west were starting to break up just as the sun was setting.  It looked like the sky was on fire as the sun reflected beneath the storm clouds.  There were wonderful hues of orange, lavender, red, pink, yellow, and orange. I had just finished a very busy and rather hectic day in the office and my mind was still racing with the events of the day.  Yet this moment so strongly captured my attention that I had to pull the car over and soak in the moment.  In that moment, it felt good to just be.

At that moment I became intensely focused on the beautiful sight in front of me.  I started to focus simply on my breathing.  I had been listening to some soft music in the car that simply became background noise that I did not let interfere with what quickly evolved into a very mindful experience for me.  I continued to simply focus on my breathing and the visual masterpiece in front of me.  Thoughts of the day passed through my mind.  I did not become disturbed or irritated with this.  I simply and casually observed my thoughts and gradually brought my attention back to my breathing and to the visually stunning colors in front of me.  I continued to remain in this scene for many minutes. As those minutes passed, I noticed the tension in my body, casually observing and noticing while continuing to breath.  I noticed sounds around me.  I did not let them distract me and gradually and effortlessly returned my attention on what and where I wanted to focus.   I began to feel more calm and peaceful in the moment and generally felt a sense of general well being begin to grow within me.   As the sun began to diminish and the sight began to fade, I returned to my surroundings in my car and proceeded to continue my journey  home.   Yet in doing so, I continued to be very focused on what was around me as I resumed my breathing in an uninterrupted way.

This experience reminded me that often enough, the more things we have in our life that purport to improve the quality of our lives, only distract us from being more centered and focused on what is important, ourselves and our overall well-being.  Returning to what is important, and being mindful in the present moment, helped me to reduce background stress, quiet anxiety and stress- filled thinking, and helped me to foster and inner peace that I think is so elusive today in not just my life, but most people’s lives that exist in the very busy and frantic world of today.

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11/8/2014

Managing Stress - "I Can't Find My Happy Place!"   Part II

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Ok, contrary to popular belief, managing stressful situations isn’t necessarily about finding your happy place.  While it may work for some,  I’m sure many other individuals find it challenging to focus at all during a very intensely stressful situations, much less imagining some warm tropical beach with the ocean breeze and waves crashing on the shore.  Mental imagery is a good place to start to manage stress.  Here are a couple more ideas that might be able to help you de-stress.  

Awareness and making stress management a priority.  

One of the most important things you can do for stress management is simply becoming more aware of it and making it 1st on your “to do” list, or at least one of the top 5.  Stop letting other things get in the way.  Stress wears you down mentally, physically, and emotionally.  It makes us unhealthy and we tend to make unhealthy choices when under stress or duress.   “I just don’t have time.”, you say.  “I can’t focus on that right now.”  “There are other things that demand too much of my attention.”  

Our capacity for critical thinking, making good choices, emotional regulation, quality of relationships; these all tend to improve when we are managing stress effectively.   Let’s do a little mental exercise to illustrate how elusive our awareness of stress can be.  Do you remember the last time you took a long vacation?  Half way through, you came to the realization you have felt more relaxed than you have in a long time.  Do you remember saying to yourself at the end of your vacation, “Wow, I was just starting to unwind and now that I’m fully relaxed, I have to go back to work tomorrow!”?    For some, it takes a long time for the more immediate effects of stress to leave them.  For many, the absence of whatever is causing their stress is the only indicator in their conscious awareness that they were as uncomfortable as they were.  

There are many different ways to bring more awareness of what might be troubling you.  In my  experience creating quiet time, or placing yourself in  an environment with less stimulation for a period of time allows you to organize your thoughts and to think more clearly and relax.  Its also a very good way for you to take inventory of the things in your life that may be causing you more harm than good.   Meditation is touted by many as a way of being able to focus your concentration and generate better awareness of yourself.  For those of you who may be interested go to this Meditation link to learn more about it.  Make a commitment now to do something about how you manage stress.


Recognizing and modifying automatic thoughts

A great deal of stress can come from our own perceptions.  One of my favorite sayings is “Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% of how you react to it."   Our own perceptions greatly determine our behavior and how we react to situations.  In turn, our perceptions are influenced by how we talk to ourselves; the internal monologue that goes on in our head every day.  These are called automatic thoughts.   The problem with automatic thoughts is that we rarely are aware that they are happening.

Being able to recognize automatic thoughts is the first step to modifying how you manage and respond to them. For example, let’s say someone close to you makes a comment that triggers an emotion and a reaction. Possible automatic thoughts could be “She doesn’t care about me.” or “He’s trying to get on my last nerve!”  This may lead to feelings of anger, resentment, or sadness.  These feelings then shape how you may react to the comment:  a reciprocal nasty comment of your own, a passive-aggressive approach of ignoring the person and thereby punishing them for their moment of indiscretion, or blaming the person as a whole for being “stupid”, or rejecting them outright.  Another example would be getting a less desirable grade on a paper or an unfavorable review on a project at work.  You might say to yourself, “I’m a failure.”  With that simple statement, you tend to judge and label yourself based on one experience, the other successes you might had the rest of the day.    The key to identifying and modifying automatic thoughts is to examine possible alternatives to the thoughts.  “What evidence do I have to think this way?”  “What are other possibilities?”  (besides taking it personally )  “Is this a fact or an opinion?” ”  “Is there an alternative explanation” “If I believe the automatic thought, how does it affect me?”  And most importantly, “What would be the result if I modified my thinking?”  “What should I do about it?”  


Exploring alternative explanations to what we think when faced with a stressful situation is the first step to changing our perceptions, how our thoughts affect our feelings, and subsequently how it affects our behavior and mental health.   Keeping a daily journal of your thoughts and experiences is also a very good conscious-raising way of identifying and modifying harmful or distorted thinking.  


It has been my experience in working with others over many years in the mental health field that stress and how to manage it is more than what happens to us, it also involves our perceptions, how we organize our thoughts, and the internal mental discussion we have with ourselves that determines our mood for that moment or that day.  I hope you found this information helpful.   In the coming weeks, I will be discussing more mental exercises to help with stress management as well as tools one can use to think more clearly and feel and be more positive in general.  Thanks for reading.  Please feel free to share your thoughts on how you manage stress.




As the people at Walgreens always say to me now when I am checking out, “Be Well!”

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10/30/2014

Managing Stress - Stress in the Workplace Part I 

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I recently read an article that reached me both on a personal and professional level.  The article can be found on the Business Insider website if you go to Why Americans Are Stressed Out at Work.   In the news article, it reported a statistic from the American Psychological Association that more than 8 in 10 Americans are “stressed out” by their jobs.  If this statistic is even close to being true, that’s a staggering figure!

The article goes on to discuss some of the top reasons why people are stressed at work:

  • low pay

  • increase workload

  • work-place bullying

  • long commutes


How stress affects us:

  • physical health

  • mental health

  • increased social isolation

  • conflict with family /spouse / friends


Physical manifestations of stress:

  • headaches

  • appetite fluctuations

  • fatigue

  • muscle tension

  • upset stomach

  • change in sex drive

  • teeth grinding


Release of Stress Hormones that impact our general physical health

  • There are three stress hormones,  adrenaline,  cortisol and norepinephrine, that are responsible for our fight/flight/freeze response when faced with a perceived threat.  These hormones play a critical function at appropriate times and are released into the bloodstream to increase our heart rate and energy level.  However, if these hormones are present over long and chronic periods of time, the potential for hypertension and cardiovascular disease increases.  The damaging effects to  the heart and cardiovascular system are increased even more when you consider that many people respond to stress by smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, both of which have been shown to have significant negative health implications. Stress even interferes with our immune system making us more susceptible to illness and disease.  

Recognizing Stress in the Workplace

  • Irritability

  • Lack of interest in work

  • Feeling overwhelmed

  • Perceived lack of control over workload

  • Avoiding peers or supervisors

  • Anxiety and/or depression


What you can do to manage stress in the workplace

  • Evaluate your career goals in relation to where you are in your current job.  Do they match?  Do you enjoy what you do?  Do you believe you are fairly compensated for what you do?  Are you able to take reasonable time off for family, leisure, vacation?  The answers to these questions can help guide you to decisions that may help you with managing work related stress.  

  • Take care of yourself.  If you haven’t done so already, please read my blog on 10 Things You Can Do (right now) to Maintain Good Mental Health

  • Take your lunch break

  • Avoid over committing yourself.  Be realistic about what you can accomplish in the time allotted for work.  When you can, delegate or ask for assistance with large projects.  

  • Take large projects and break them down into smaller manageable steps to help with a sense of progress and completion. 


  • Think before you act.  Avoid those impulsive, in-the-heat-of-the-moment knee-jerk reactions to demands, ultimatums, or stressful situations.  Take a day or two if necessary.  Talk with a peer or supervisor before saying or doing something that might have long term career implications.  

  • Reward yourself for a job well done.  Take the time to recognize your own accomplishments and take pride in your work.  It can go a long way in improving a negative disposition in the workplace.  

While many would agree that their work environment is stressful, it certainly isn't the only thing that is stressful in our lives;  financial obligations, work/family balance, increasing and competing demands on our time, relationship difficulties, and personal loss are just a few things that are challenging to many.  

The way one responds to stress varies widely from individual to individual. Let’s face it, stress is inevitable.  Everybody experiences it.  I can recall many times in recent memory where I've had to step outside myself and think, “You really could have handled that better than you did.”  Sometimes we aren't even aware that we are stressed.   In these instances it usually takes someone close to us may bring it to our awareness. .  Even then,  often enough pretend that everything is “fine”, that we aren't troubled, and that if we just “push through”, the troubling situation will eventually pass.  We often become very good at this and the stress, which really hasn't gone away by the way, becomes something that we get used to and ignore.  Yet the body is aware, and frequently lets us know.  We simply dismiss those sleepless nights, worrying and ruminating thoughts, frequent headaches, fatigue, and muscle cramps and chalk it up to, “that’s just the way it is right now,”  & “it will pass.”  

While we all experience stress, there are many individuals who cope well and are successful in learning to adapt and change in response to stressful situations, rather than letting it overtake their lives.   Stress can actually be a good thing in a way in that it can serve as an indicator or alert that something in our immediate environment is not right and change needs to occur.  I believe that the difference for those individuals who are expert stress managers is that they are more self-aware and recognize the healthy changes that need to take place and are able to make these changes as needed.  Furthermore I believe these individuals are able to re-frame a stressful situation and avoid the negative self-talk that is so often the culprit of poor self care and poor choices.  These individuals are better able to take control of a situation rather than letting that situation take control of them.  If you are interested in learning more about individuals who cope well with stress, you can find more information in the article in Psychology Today titled, 10 Traits of Emotionally Resilient People.   


  Check back next week for Part II of Managing Stress



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    Brent Bernard is a Master's Level Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor with over 25 years of experience in the state of Ohio.  

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